Syrian opposition fighters, who were evacuated from the last opposition-held district in the central city of Homs, embrace as they arrive in the Maaret al-Ikhwaan village north of Idlib, on 22 May 2017. The Syrian regime on 21 May regained total control of the central city of Homs with the evacuation of rebels from the last area they had controlled.(photo: AFP/Omar Haj Kadour/Getty Images)

Syria says Homs cleared of armed opposition(The Los Angeles Times) Syria’s government announced Sunday that the country’s third-largest city, Homs — once deemed the capital of the revolt against President Bashar Assad — had been cleared of armed opposition for the first time in more than five years. The announcement follows the completion of the evacuation of the last rebel-held neighborhood...

Conflict feeds rising divorce rates in Gaza(U.S. News and World Report) It used to be rare for a couple, especially one married for so long, to divorce in conservative Gaza, where even social relations between males and females before marriage face restrictions. Divorce is now a topic of frequent public concern, and one seen as an indicator of how bad Gaza’s humanitarian and sociopolitical crises have become. Divorce is a “national catastrophe,” says Abu Salman Al Mughany, 75, a “mukhtar,” or community leader, who mitigates family issues in Gaza City. “It’s the collapse of the social fabric in our communities...”

Report: Iraq conflict drives displacement to ‘nearly unprecedented’ level(Norwegian Refugee Council) The last three years of conflict in Iraq have caused a displacement crisis that is ‘nearly without precedent’ according to a report released today by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). The Global Report on Internal Displacement found that widespread military offensives in Iraq caused almost 660,000 new displacements in 2016. One in ten people displaced by conflict around the world in 2016 were displaced in Iraq, bringing the total number of internally displaced Iraqis to over three million. A growing proportion of Iraqis have also been displaced more than once...

Egypt refers 48 to court over Coptic church bombings(BBC) Egypt’s public prosecutor says 48 suspected members of so-called Islamic State (ISIS) have been referred to a military court in connection with three bombings of Coptic churches. Thirty-one of the suspects are in custody while the others are still at large...

St. Nicholas relics arrive in Russia after more than 900 years in Italy(AP) Relics of Saint Nicholas, one of the Russian Orthodox Church’s most revered figures, arrived in Moscow on Sunday from an Italian church where they have lain for 930 years. Intense media coverage accompanied the arrival, underlining the church’s influence in post-Soviet Russia...

CNEWA’s Michael J. La Civita writes: “This gentleman lives in a container with his wife, who is dying of cancer. He asked me to take a picture of him and his wife. Their sons are dead, and he alone cares for Victoria, who said she has every comfort.” (photo: Michael J. La Civita)

Today, we received more stirring images from Michael J. La Civita. He and Thomas Varghese, CNEWA’s director of programs, are on a pastoral visit to the Caucasus.

Michael described what he saw:

There is poverty, and then there is grinding poverty.

For many reasons, but I will start with corruption and tragedy, almost half of Armenia’s people have endured decades of want: want of shelter, heat, food, water and health.

What they have in abundance is dignity.

My friend and colleague, Thomas, today visited people who this past winter needed help to heat their homes and needed, as well, food to eat.

CNEWA’s Thomas Varghese visits Ophelia, an 85-year-old orphan who lives in a room in a decomposing hostel built by the Soviets in 1926. (photo: Michael J. La Civita)

Unemployment in the Gyumri region is more than 70 percent. Many of the people we visited today live in “temporary” housing since their homes and their lives were destroyed in the great earthquake in 1988.

Yes I said temporary. Sheds made of corrugated tin — some with electricity, others not. Bathrooms are holes in the ground.

This corrugated structure houses a blind father, his wife, their daughter and her two toddlers. Her husband abandoned her at 25, leaving her for Russia and a new life. That is a common story in Armenia. (photo: Michael J. La Civita)

Thanks to Caritas Armenia, families are receiving help, and I am pleased CNEWA is there in support. But I am frustrated that what we do is but a drop in the bucket.

Pope Francis greets a resident as he arrives to give an Easter blessing to a home in a public housing complex in Ostia, a Rome suburb on the Mediterranean Sea, 19 May. Continuing his Mercy Friday visits, the pope blessed a dozen homes in Ostia.(photo: CNS/L’Osservatore Romano)

Like parish priests throughout Italy do during the Easter season, Pope Francis spent an afternoon 19 May going door to door and blessing homes.

Continuing the “Mercy Friday” visits he began during the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis chose a public housing complex in Ostia, a Rome suburb on the Mediterranean Sea.

The Vatican press office said Father Plinio Poncina, pastor of Stella Maris parish, put up signs 17 May announcing a priest would be visiting the neighborhood to bless houses. The signs, which indicate a date and give a time frame, are a common site in Italy in the weeks before and after Easter.

“It was a great surprise today when, instead of the pastor, the one ringing the door bells was Pope Francis,” the press office said. “With great simplicity, he interacted with the families, he blessed a dozen apartments” and left rosaries for the residents.

“Joking, he apologized for disturbing people, however he reassured them that he had respected the hour of silence for a nap after lunch in accordance with the sign posted at the entrance to the building,” the press office said.

The pope’s Friday visits to hospitals and hospices, homes for children, rehab centers and other places of care were planned for the Year of Mercy as tangible ways for the pope to practice the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

Although the Year of Mercy ended in November, the pope restarted making Mercy Friday visits in March when he visited a home and educational center for the blind and visually impaired.

Pope Francis gives an Easter blessing to a home in a public housing complex in Ostia, a Rome suburb on the Mediterranean Sea. (photo: CNS/L’Osservatore Romano)

Syria says U.S. air strike killed soldiers(AP) A Syrian military official said Friday that an aerial “aggression” by the U.S.-led coalition on a government military position near the border with Jordan the day before killed several soldiers and caused material damage. The strike was the first such close confrontation between U.S. forces and fighters backing President Bashar Assad and the development is likely to increase tensions in the war-torn country...

The last stand of ISIS in Mosul will test Iraqi forces(The Washington Post) After making rapid gains in a new offensive, Iraqi forces are close to choking off the last bastion of several hundred Islamic State fighters dug into the twisting alleyways and narrow streets of Mosul’s Old City. The final push will be led by Iraqi’s U.S.-trained Counter Terrorism Service units, the same forces that first entered the eastern reaches of the city in October when the battle to retake the city began, officers said. The plan involves clearing the final few neighborhoods north of the Old City and surrounding the square-mile-wide neighborhood...

Trump embarks on trip to Middle East(Reuters) With turmoil enveloping his administration at home, President Donald Trump heads abroad on Friday for a trip the White House hopes will shift focus away from domestic controversies and on to his foreign policy agenda...

Russian patriarch asks U.N., Pope to intervene over religious laws(RT) The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has appealed to a number of international religious and political leaders, asking them to not let Kiev enforce its recent initiative that might see Orthodox religious communities diminished in Ukraine...

Armenia is rich in culture, history, faith and generosity. And thank God for that, for the poverty among some of its people is heartbreaking. Yet, how moving is the work of the church here.

Although tiny — and scattered from Siberia to the Caucasus — the Archdiocese of the Armenian Catholic Church is led by a shepherd who smells of his sheep. “RAM,” as the archbishop [Rafael Minassian] jokingly refers to himself, is a man on the move, always thinking of ways to reach and greet and help the poorest of the poor.

Archbishop Rafael Minassian, a shepherd close to his flock, jokingly refers to himself as “RAM.”(photo: Michael J. La Civita)

Some villagers from Vallakkallu, India, traveled to Marayoor to meet with journalist Don Duncan.(photo: Don Duncan)

In the current edition of ONE, photojournalist Don Duncan reports on efforts atBreaking the Cycleof alcoholism and abuse in Kerala, and giving children a better future. Here, he offers some additional thoughts on India’s tribal culture.

While doing reporting for ONE in eastern Kerala state (in Idukki province to be exact), I had the privilege to get a closer look at some of India’s “scheduled tribes.”

India’s constitution recognizes some 645 distinct tribes that it regards as disadvantaged or culturally vulnerable and thus it sets out provisions to both help these tribes and to protect their respective cultures. According to the country’s 2011 census, people from these “scheduled tribes” make up 8.6 percent of the population.

Kerala state is home to 35 of those tribes and the tribal people make up 5 percent of its population.

Known in Hindi as Adivasi or “original inhabitants,” the various tribes tend to live in insular communities, many of them geographically remote. They are often suspicious or distrustful of outsider contact and the government maintains certain policies that bolster this insularity in a bid to protect the tribes’ unique cultures from contamination from the wider, dominant Indian culture.

As a foreigner, I was not allowed to visit the tribal village of Vallakkallu, which could be reached by a 15 mile trek cross country from Marayoor, the town I was based in for my reporting. “If you go there, the police could come and stop or maybe even arrest you,” my guide, Sister Melvy of the Sisters of the Destitute, told me. In fact, it is very difficult even for regular Indians to establish meaningful contact with certain tribes, so strong is their suspicion of outsiders or sense of insularity.

The Indian government takes the cultural protection of its aboriginal tribes very seriously. That impulse in and of itself is certainly commendable. But, as I got deeper into my reporting — which explored child welfare issues such as lack of education, bad parenting and child labor — I wondered if the government’s well-intentioned policy of protection vis-à-vis India’s scheduled tribes did not also have certain negative, unintended consequences.

While the tribal policy of the government does protect the cultural integrity of the tribes (as well as offering them material support), that same protection policy seems to also serve as a sort of obstacle to those charities/NGO’s wishing to help tribes improve their lot. A case in point is education. The Muthuvan tribe, which lives in Vallakkallu village, puts value and emphasis on working the land and doesn’t see the point of schooling. Attendance in the state primary school in the village is shabby and the only person who seems pro-schooling in any real way is the village’s sole teacher.

I think this opposition between the value of working the land and the value of education is one that is familiar to many. In the West, we started, at a certain point in the past, to evolve from a land-based value system to one that put more value in ideas and learning: the “knowledge economy,” as we call it now.

But each society evolves at its own pace and I think it is correct to respect the individual pace and nature of other societies’ respective evolutions.

But can a people evolve naturally when they are “protected” and ghettoized on reservations? If left to their own devices, the tribes of India would most probably interact to some degree with others, adopt what they see as useful, and essentially evolve at a pace and in a way that suits them best. But with the way things are now, while the government does much to preserve the tribes’ fragile and unique cultures, it also risks fossilizing these people, holding them in suspension, while the rest of India continues to develop.

“Christians in Egypt are now struggling for their existence,” he told Archbishop Martin on 18 May.

Archbishop Martin told Pope Tawadros that Irish Catholics were “very aware of the suffering that your Coptic community has endured even in recent weeks,” a reference to a pair of terrorist attacks 9 April at two Egyptian churches. The Islamic State group claimed credit for the attacks, which killed at least 45 people, injured more than 100 others and shook the Middle East’s largest Christian community to the core.

Assuring the Coptic leader of his “prayerful solidarity,” Archbishop Martin expressed the hope that Egypt could “become a beacon in the region for freedom of religion and for dialogue among all believers, especially with our Muslims sisters and brothers.”

Pope Tawadros also met Irish President Michael Higgins, other foreign officials and members of the Coptic Orthodox communities. He also consecrated two Coptic Orthodox churches in Dublin and Waterford.

The Coptic leader’s visit follows his pastoral visit to Britain, where he was received by Queen Elizabeth, Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury and the Prince of Wales.

On 12 May, Pope Tawadros was received by Archbishop Welby at Lambeth Palace and signed the official guestbook with the words “Love Never Ends.”

U.N. expects 200,000 more people to be driven from Mosul as fighting intensifies(Reuters) The United Nations said on Thursday up to 200,000 more people could flee Mosul as Iraqi forces push into the last districts held by Islamic State militants. Iraqi authorities and aid agencies are already struggling to cope with a surge in displacement since security forces opened a new front against the militants in Mosul earlier this month...

Turkey opens ‘city’ for orphans of Syrian war(BBC) Turkey has opened a vast center dedicated to housing and educating orphans from war-torn Syria. The complex, in the south-eastern border town of Reyhanli, will house 990 children in what Turkish media say is a cozy, home environment. They will live in 55 villas and have access to four schools, a mosque, a playground and a sports arena...

Indian religious groups meet to prepare for catastrophes(Vatican Radio) Caritas India in New Delhi on Tuesday, brought together faith-based organizations active in disaster management to create a network to help India become more resilient when catastrophe strikes. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and Buddhist organizations participated in the meeting along with former government officials from the Disaster Management Authority. “It is time not only to be change-makers but also make others into change-makers,” said Swamini Adityanand Saraswati from the Global Interfaith Wash Alliance while addressing the meeting...

Copts who sought sanctuary ordered back to Egypt(The Australian) Ashraf Boshre spent 48 years double-checking that the security doors of his home in Giza, Egypt, were firmly locked before going to sleep. A Coptic Christian, the 51-year-old brought his wife, Amany, and daughters Maria, 24, Mira, 19, and Monica, 13, to Australia in late 2013 on a visitors’ visa, before applying for protection following decades of abuse. “When I’m walking the street, going to church (here), no one is going to come attack you,” said Mr. Boshre, who now lives in Sydney’s south. “No one is going to come attack your daughters because they’re not wearing the head cover. It helps me, I feel happy.” But within days, Mr. Boshre, his family, his parents Ibrahim and Nora, and sisters will be asked to buy plane tickets and return to Giza...

Priests and scribes assist Abune Gregorius, Archbishop of Ziway, Ethiopia, as he studies an ancient text near the island church of Debre Zion. To learn more about Ethiopian Orthodoxy at the Crossroads, check out our November 2007 edition of ONE. (photo: Sean Sprague)

Pope Francis prepares to use incense to venerate an icon of the Holy Family as he celebrates Mass at the Air Defense Stadium in Cairo on 29 April. UNESCO plans to declare the path taken by the Holy Family through Egypt as a World Heritage site. (photo: CNS/Paul Haring)

‘Path of the Holy Family’ to be recognized by UNESCO(Fides) UNESCO is preparing to recognize the “Path of the Holy Family,” the itinerary that unites the places traveled, according to the millennial traditions, by Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus when they found refuge in Egypt to escape the violence of Herod, as “World Heritage” of humanity. This is what Adel Gindy, general head of the international relations of the Egyptian tourism development Authority reported to national media...

Syria denies it burned bodies of political prisoners(The New York Times) The Syrian government forcefully rejected on Tuesday accusations by the United States that the bodies of thousands of political prisoners had been disposed of in a crematory at a prison near Damascus, describing the allegations as “lies” to justify American aggression...

The Mosul families who lived in fear(Metro.co.uk) With ISIS on the brink of defeat in Mosul, a dark chapter in the history of the city looks set to come to an end. But for those civilians who fled, or found themselves trapped by the militants, there remains a long road ahead. Metro.co.uk spoke to the Iraqis who are trying to rebuild the lives that the terror group destroyed...

Ukraine’s president says his official website hit by a cyberattack(BBC) Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s official website has been hit by an “organised” cyber-attack from Russia, his administration has said. It said it was Russia’s response to Mr Poroshenko’s decree banning some of Russia’s biggest social media networks and net services popular in Ukraine...